Memories, black and white, hide behind the glass
by black.k.kat
Summary: Ianto never dreams, not for himself. He only sees the others' dreams, their castles in the sky.


**Rating:** PG

**Word count:** ~ 1,500

**Warnings: **Weirdness, angst, copious amounts of fluff.

**Summary:** Ianto never dreams, not for himself. He only sees the others' dreams, their castles in the sky.

**Disclaimer: **All recognizable characters are the property of their respective owners. I am in no way associated with the creators, and no copyright infringement is intended.

**A/N: **For the last week or so, I've been under the impression that my writing muse had died a sudden and aggravating death. Apparently, all I needed to kick-start her once more was two sleepless nights in a row, and surprise! Weirdness and dream-walking ahoy! The title (equally as odd as the story, I'm so sorry) is from the song _Cartouche_ by Blackmore's Night.

(I'm still insanely happy to take prompts/ideas/thoughts for stories, if you've got them and want to pass them on.)

* * *

_**Memories, black and white, hide behind the glass**_

Gwen dreams in bright colors and fuzzy sounds, a golden world gone soft with time and the veil of memory. Her dreams are laughter and sunshine, family scenes that are oddly flat and two-dimensional, no depth of emotion to set them apart from storybook pages.

_This is what my life is supposed to look like_, they seem to say. _These are the dreams that I'm allowed to have._

But there's a shadow buried deep beneath the brightness, an edge to certain things that make them all the more unreal.

Gwen wants more than what is seen, more than the normality that infuses her sleeping mind. Her dazzling dreams are tangled up with monsters and madness, mysterious figures in long coats that smile and turn and stride directly into the darkness, waiting for her to follow.

In her dreams, in the depth of the night, Gwen is just like the rest of them.

Ianto stands at the edges of the dreams, watches the brightness try to cover up the dark, and likes her that much more for it.

Then he turns and steps across the edges of reverie, through a door carved from fantasy, and leaves her to her sleep.

* * *

Tosh's dreams are circuitry and wires, sharp and razor-edged, woven in copper and steel. She is hard here in a way she rarely shows the waking world, the diamond-keenness of her mind fully on display.

Like a conductor, like a conduit, Tosh stands in the center of a world composed entirely of machines. Her hands are raised, giving direction, and she is smiling in a way Ianto rarely sees in reality. The machines and codes and wires warp and twist the world to her imagination, binary and strings of numbers and algorithms so complex that Ianto can't even begin to imagine what they do.

Here, Tosh is the radiant, burning goddess of all beneath her gaze. Here, there is nothing to detract from that, no awkwardness, no shyness, no schoolgirl adoration of a man who will not, cannot, love her back.

Here, only her will matters, only her thoughts, and if the machines and codes can't love her back either, well—

Machines aren't supposed to, so there was never any chance at all.

And perhaps she's shut it away, locked it away in the depths of this dream-world, but Ianto knows how to uncover anyone's secrets, and finds the barred room easily enough.

It's a cell, tiny and barren, with a single small window set high in the wall. Pale light filters through, never changing, and the figure in an orange jumpsuit sits huddled deep in the corner, curled in on herself. She doesn't react when Ianto opens the door, when he waves away the locks and allows a whirl of fresh air inside the cell.

Ianto watches her for a moment, this cowering, shaking woman brought down to nothingness despite—or perhaps because of—her brilliance—and then steps back out of the claustrophobic room.

He shuts the door, watches the locks wrap it up tightly, so securely that nothing will ever escape, and then walks away.

The border between dreams is easy to find, even here in the midst of a thousand whirring, grinding machines, and he strides through without pause.

* * *

Suzie used to dream in classical string instruments: the soprano violin, the alto-voiced viola, the tenor of the cello, the deepness of the double bass.

Ianto still remembers when the music stopped, and her dreams turned empty, a vast expanse of white nothingness.

Sometimes, he wonders if he could of saved her from her madness, if he had said something then.

* * *

Owen is the kind of person, Ianto thinks, who should dream in darkness and sharp edges, biting words and bitterly drawn blood.

He still remembers his own surprise, stepping into the doctor's dreams the first time and finding a small, neatly kept blue house with white trim, a postage-stamp yard with a young oak tree in the corner. There's a station wagon in the driveway, lace curtains in the windows, and flowerboxes full of lavender and foxglove.

No matter how many times Ianto visits, the sky is always a deep dark grey.

There is a street that runs past the perfect house, and Ianto often stands at the corner, watching. Sometimes, the front door will open and Owen will tumble out, laughing and happy, with a blond woman arm in arm with him. They get in the car together and drive off, and the dream slowly fades away.

Sometimes, the car comes back, and Owen helps the blond woman out. They walk up to the door, unspeaking, but smiling at each other. On the front step, Owen turns to the woman and kisses her, softly, gently, with so much love that Ianto is surprised his own heart doesn't break just watching.

At those times, he turns and leaves of his own volition, before the lovely, melancholy dream can fade to pieces around him and then disappear.

* * *

Jack never has the same dream twice.

Ianto never knows what will greet him when he steps through the veil of reverie and into the world of the Captain's subconscious. Once, it is a long stretch of white sand and a blue ocean, with a fantastical city far out at the horizon.

Once, it is a space station in the future, all dark metal splattered with blood and ringing with the fading sound of a TARDIS dematerializing.

Once, it is the Hub, covered in red rose petals, the carpet of them deep enough to drown in.

Once, a golden field with fire in the sky and two young boys running, a hand slipping away to be lost forever.

A cold, dark room far beneath ground, a torture chamber with two vicious monsters pacing the edges, only barely covered by the skin of two pretty women.

Captain John Hart, one hand on his sword and a cocky smile on his lips, and then a long drop into pain and nothingness.

A madman's insane eyes and a hundred thousand deaths, each more agonizing than the last.

Estelle's smile, young and old, beautiful no matter what age she is.

The Hub again, but this time warm with the smell of coffee and hot Chinese, a group of five gathered around a wooden table to eat and laugh, with the Rift monitor a steady hum behind them.

A man with big ears and an equally big grin, "_Fantastic!_" dropped into conversation as though the entire universe is amazing and wonderful and nothing can ever be bad forever, no matter what.

Brown eyes wide in wonder, a girl—young, so young, so beautiful and strong and brilliant—who thinks the universe is all good, somewhere deep down, even when it isn't.

(Ianto loves Jack's dreams most of all, no matter what they are, because they're _Jack's_, and nothing can ever make him dislike _anything_ about Jack. that's why he visits Jack's dreams the most, wraps himself in the images, holds on to Jack and comforts him, laughs with him, cries with him.

That's why Ianto will never let Jack go, even if that means twining their minds and souls together for eternity.

He's done it already, and he can't call up even an ounce of guilt for his actions.

Jack might hate his immortality, but nothing in all of time and space could make Ianto _not_ want to spent forever at Jack's side.)

* * *

Ianto never dreams, not for himself. He only sees the others' dreams, their castles in the sky.

He always has, from the first time he closed his eyes and a newborn babe and saw his mother's wonder and pride, her weariness and love and _Ianto, we'll call you Ianto, cariad_.

When he wakes up from dreams of brilliance and shadows, wires and codes, pretty houses and grey skies, or ever-shifting memories, when he surfaces from these things and finds himself in the Hub, in Jack's bunker, wrapped in the Captain's arms and held so carefully, achingly close—

At times like those, he can't bring himself to regret the lack of dreams.

This reality, this waking world, is far better than any flights of fancy, any dreams could ever be.


End file.
